Position: Chief Creative Officer
Location: Dublin / London (with European travel)
Reports to: CEO
Company: Staycity Group
Type: Full-time | Permanent

About Staycity Group

Staycity Group is one of Europe's leading aparthotel operators, offering modern, spacious, and flexible accommodation that blends the comforts of home with the quality and consistency of a hotel experience. Operating under the Staycity Aparthotels and Wilde by Staycity brands, we manage more than 6,000 apartments in vibrant cities such as Dublin, London, Paris, Berlin, and Venice, with continued expansion planned across Europe.

We are a growth-oriented, values-driven business backed by a strong financial foundation and a culture of operational excellence. Our team is passionate about delivering exceptional guest experiences while building one of the most respected hospitality businesses in the market.

The Role

The Chief Creative Officer is a senior leadership role at the heart of Staycity Group's ambition to compete with the best lifestyle hotel and aparthotel brands in the world. Reporting directly to the CEO, the CCO carries a mandate to own the creative soul of both brands across every guest touchpoint, from the first digital impression through to the lived experience of waking up in a Wilde in Lisbon or a Staycity in Edinburgh.

The CCO will serve as the creative conscience of the business: a collaborator, a challenger, and a keeper of standards. They will work closely with the CEO, Chief Development Officer, Chief Projects Officer, and Operations leaders, as well as external design, architecture, and agency partners to ensure that every new property, campaign, product, and experience tells a coherent and compelling brand story.

This is not a pure marketing role, nor a pure design role. It requires someone who thinks holistically across spaces, stories, and sensory experience, and who understands the commercial context in which great creative work must operate.

The CCO will lead and take direct responsibility for three internal teams: an Interior Design team, a Food & Beverage Strategy team, and a Marketing team. In parallel, the CCO will manage a network of external specialists across all three disciplines, including architectural practices, specialist interior designers, F&B consultants, creative and media agencies and content producers, ensuring that the Group has access to the best creative talent both inside and outside the organisation.

Key Working Relationships

The CCO operates at the intersection of creativity and delivery. Success in this role depends on building trusted, productive relationships across the Group's senior leadership team and with key external partners.

• Chief Executive Officer: The CCO's direct line and closest strategic partner. Together they will set the creative ambition for both brands, make key investment decisions, and ensure creative vision is embedded at board level.

• Chief Development Officer: A critical relationship given the pace of new site acquisition. The CCO will engage at the earliest stages of concept development to ensure brand positioning and design intent are established before construction begins.

• Chief Projects Officer: The CCO and CPO will work in close partnership through the full delivery cycle, from design sign-off through to final fit-out and pre-opening walk-through. Creative standards must translate from intent to reality, and this relationship is where that accountability lives.

• Operations Leaders: Brand standards only matter if they are lived daily. The CCO will work closely with General Managers and regional operations leaders to ensure that the guest experience at every property consistently reflects the creative vision, and to understand where the real-world experience diverges from the intention.

• External Partners: Architects, interior designers, creative agencies, photographers, F&B concept developers, and brand collaborators across European markets.

Key Responsibilities:

Brand & Visual Identity

• Own and evolve the visual and tonal identity of both the Staycity and Wilde brands, ensuring they are clearly differentiated, internally consistent, and externally distinctive.

• Define and maintain brand guidelines covering logo usage, colour palette, typography, photography style, illustration, iconography and design language across all touchpoints

• Ensure brand integrity is upheld from digital channels and OTA listings through to physical signage, in-room collateral, and staff presentation

• Lead periodic brand reviews and evolution, keeping both brands fresh and culturally relevant without losing their core identity

• Manage and develop the internal creative team, and oversee relationships with external brand agencies and design studios

• Own and evolve the Staycity Group corporate identity alongside the consumer brands, ensuring it speaks credibly to investors, development partners, and prospective talent

Guest Experience Design

• Shape the sensory and emotional experience of every guest, ensuring that the atmosphere, ambiance, and feel of each property is intentional, memorable, and on-brand.

• Define the experience pillars for each brand, from arrival and lobby atmosphere through to in-room sensory elements including lighting, scent, sound, and texture

• Work closely with Operations leaders, housekeeping, and F&B teams to ensure the guest journey is coherent and emotionally considered at every stage, and that brand standards are embedded in day-to-day operational delivery

• Develop and document brand experience standards that translate consistently across properties in different cities and markets

• Champion the guest perspective in internal decision-making, acting as a voice for what guests see, feel, and remember

Interior & Architecture Direction

• Provide creative leadership on property design for new builds, refurbishments, and conversions, working alongside the Chief Development Officer, Chief Projects Officer, external architects, and interior designers

• Set the creative brief and direction for all new Wilde and Staycity properties at concept stage, ensuring design intent is rooted in brand values and neighbourhood context

• Review and sign off on interior design proposals, materials specifications, FF&E selections, and artwork programmes

• Build and manage relationships with a roster of preferred architects and interior designers across European markets

• Ensure design decisions are commercially viable and operationally achievable without compromising creative standards

• Champion locally-rooted design thinking, particularly for Wilde, where neighbourhood identity is central to the brand proposition

Marketing & Content

• Lead the creative output of all marketing activity, ensuring campaigns, content, and communications reflect the visual world and voice of each brand.

• Set creative direction and approval for all brand campaigns across digital, social, print, OOH, and paid media

• Define and evolve the photography and videography style for both brands, working with in-house and commissioned talent

• Oversee editorial and social content strategy from a creative standpoint, ensuring storytelling is consistent, culturally attuned, and platform-appropriate

• Partner with the commercial and digital marketing teams to ensure creative excellence does not compromise commercial performance

• Lead the creative review process for agency outputs, acting as the ultimate standard-setter and brand guardian

Food & Beverage Concept

• Contribute creative direction to F&B concepts across the portfolio, particularly for Wilde properties where food and beverage is a key part of the lifestyle proposition.

• Collaborate with F&B operators, chefs, and concept developers on naming, theming, menu design, and the overall atmosphere of restaurants, bars, and café spaces

• Ensure F&B environments are coherent with the wider interior and brand story of each property

• Review and influence branded F&B collateral including menus, packaging, merchandising, and digital presence

Product & Merchandise

• Direct the development of branded products, in-room amenities, and guest-facing collateral, ensuring every physical touchpoint reinforces the brand's values and aesthetic.

• Lead the creative selection and curation of in-room amenity ranges for both brands

• Oversee the design of all branded merchandise, retail items, and gifting, particularly for Wilde where lifestyle retail represents a brand-building opportunity

• Ensure sustainability and quality credentials of products align with the Group's broader values and guest expectations

Innovation & Trend Intelligence

• Keep Staycity Group ahead of the cultural, design, and hospitality trends that will define the next generation of European aparthotel travel.

• Actively scan culture, design, travel, food, and lifestyle trends globally to inform creative strategy and brand evolution

• Build and nurture relationships with artists, designers, architects, and cultural figures who can bring genuine creative energy to the brands

• Identify opportunities for brand partnerships, collaborations, and cultural moments that extend both brands beyond the hospitality category

• Champion innovation in guest experience and brand expression, from emerging technologies to new spatial concepts

The Person We Are Looking For:

Experience & Background

• ·Significant creative leadership experience, ideally including a senior role (Creative Director, Head of Brand, CCO, or equivalent) within luxury or premium lifestyle hospitality, branded residences, luxury retail, or a closely related lifestyle or cultural sector, with a clear understanding of what it means to build brands that guests feel genuine affinity for

• A demonstrable portfolio of brand-building work, someone who has built or evolved a brand with real emotional resonance and commercial impact

• Experience working across both physical spaces and digital/marketing creative, comfort with the full spectrum of a brand's visual life

• Familiarity with European markets and an understanding of what it means to build a brand that works across cities with different cultural identities

• Experience leading multidisciplinary creative teams, ideally spanning interior design, marketing, and F&B or brand strategy, alongside external agency and specialist relationships

• Experience gained within aspirational, design-led lifestyle brands

• Hands-on experience shaping F&B concepts, not solely overseeing F&B from a marketing distance

Skills & Capabilities

• Exceptional visual taste and a strong point of view, someone who knows what great looks like and has the conviction to hold the line

• Strategic thinking combined with hands-on creative instinct: able to write a brand positioning document and also brief a photographer

• Strong communication and storytelling skills, able to articulate creative vision compellingly to the board, to development partners, to architects, and to guests

• Commercial awareness: understands how creative decisions affect revenue, occupancy, and brand equity

• Collaborative and influence-led leadership style, most of this role's impact will come through working with and through others, not through direct authority

• Curiosity, taste, and genuine engagement with culture: this person reads, travels, eats well, and pays attention

Role at a Glance:

• Reports to: Chief Executive Officer

• Two brands: Staycity Aparthotels & Wilde

• Scope: Brand, design, guest experience, marketing creative, F&B, product

• 40 properties across 20 European cities

• Pipeline of 4,500+ rooms under development

• London pipeline GDV: £800m+

• Target: 18,000 keys by 2029

• A genuine seat at the table with direct access to the CEO

What Success Looks Like:

In the first 12 months, the CCO will have:

• Established a trusted working relationship with the CEO, CDO, and key development partners

• Set the creative brief and direction for our new Wilde property pipeline

• Reviewed and refreshed the brand guidelines for both Staycity and Wilde

• Elevated the quality and consistency of marketing and content output across both brands

• Established clear leadership of the Interior Design, F&B Strategy, and Marketing teams, and put the right external agency and specialist partnerships in place across all three disciplines

• Delivered the new SCG website and group identity, setting the tone for how the Group presents itself to investors and partners

• Over three years, the CCO will have made Wilde one of the most recognisable and creatively admired lifestyle aparthotel brands in Europe, and elevated Staycity into a brand that guests genuinely feel proud to stay with and return to time and time again.

Why Staycity Group?

• A rare opportunity to define the creative direction of two distinct, growing brands at a pivotal moment in their development

• Direct access to and support from the CEO, this is a genuine C-suite position with real influence

• A financially strong, privately held business with the ambition and capital to back bold creative decisions

• An entrepreneurial culture that moves fast and values creative quality as a competitive advantage

• An expanding European footprint in some of the continent's most exciting and design-conscious cities

• The chance to build something, a brand that will outlast any individual tenure and that guests across Europe will feel a genuine connection to

If you thrive in a fast-paced environment, lead with kindness and clarity, and make data-driven decisions, we’d love to hear from you! Start your Staycity journey – Apply now!